Perfect Storms
by overstars
Summary: After the events of "Unbearable Luminosity", the new team sets themselves to the task of surviving on their new planet, and find that their new home is not what it seems.
1. Calm Before

"Perfect Storms  
By: overstars

**Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate SG-1 or any of the characters within. I do not intend to infringe upon any copyrights. I have made no financial or tangible gains from the writing or publication of this story on this site or any other site on which it may appear.**

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**1. Calm Before**

This planet does not work on Earth time, and the fourteen hours of darkness a night are disconcerting, but Jennifer can make the conversion. She can tell that they've been there for exactly thirty two days and sixteen hours, Earth time. Math's always been her strong suit. In fact, math is her pacifier, her soothing shot of scotch after the hard days. It helps to work out theorems in her head at night, it works like some low level mental painkiller. It keeps her thinking about wormholes and the science that everyone else seems so keen to forget.

They're still going to have to work the numbers, work the problem. Only nobody else is.

They've been building a log cabin and a storage shed, for the most part she's gone along with it. Which is fine, but nobody else seems to have thought beyond that. So, they build it and just live in it until the supplies are gone and they're stuck eating leaves?

Jennifer's tried to bring it up with someone, but Jack is always keeping them busy, always has something else that he says is more pressing.

So she's sitting on the ground of a planet they still haven't come up with a name for , staring up at a newly finished roof.

Jonas and Paul have gone out hunting for food and firewood and anything else that could be potentially useful. Jack and Amy are putting on finishing details to the house and using mud to fill in any cracks.

She looks up at the roof and wipes her forehead. She takes a long drink of water from her canteen. Her frustration goes deeper than her physical sense of weariness. Her frustration feels like a tightly wound cord at the center of her being, pushing her against the walls she's starting to run into.

The walls she thought she'd gotten to leave behind. It always seems to go this way in her life. She thinks she's going to a better place, a place where she's not going to be held back by fears, bureaucracy, or just inferior people with inferior brains.

It's a smaller bureaucracy, but it's the same story. Jennifer is ready to go, but Jack's afraid, and Paul and Jonas follow his lead, and Amy is nowhere near ready.

And none of them are working the problem. That's the worst part.

It's not that Jennifer snaps, but makes the conscious decision that from this point on, it's over. Gate travel or bust. She isn't going to wait long enough to snap.

Jack comes from around the side of the house and says, "Hup, hup, Hailey, still got to roof the shed."

Jennifer looks up at him. Shirtless and sweating as profusely as she is, his pale and mostly hairless teenage-boy chest exposed. If he sucked in just a little she could count all his ribs. And his stomach is flat and there are the barest indications of ab muscles. His shirt is tucked into his belt and he bends down to wipe his forehead.

Funny, the old Jack O'Neill never looked that scrawny. But then again, he had almost fifty years of grit, gristle and scars to fill him out.

"With all due respect, sir, no"

Jack stands still with one eyebrow up. "Excuse me?"

Jennifer stands up and caps her canteen. "You want the shed done, do it yourself."

"My hearing must be going in my old age here, Captain, because I thought I just heard you say you weren't helping us with the shed," Jack answers.

"Sorry, sir, I'll use smaller words. _Bite. Me._"

"Do you need me to make it an order?"

Jennifer crosses her arms. "You and exactly what Air Force?"

Jack rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Oh for cryin' out loud. What's gotten into you, Hailey?"

"I didn't give up my career to go on an intergalactic camping trip. We've been here for nearly a month and so far all we've done is waste supplies and use up most of anything that might be useful for trade!"

"We're trying to make sure we have somewhere to live and store our supplies!"

"We won't have any supplies to store if we don't start getting offworld immediately."

"How is that going to help anything, especially if we can't protect whatever we get offworld from the weather?"

Hailey puts a hand to over her eyes and growls a long frustrated growl. "My problem is not the shed! My problem is that this is just another excuse."

"An excuse?"

"Yes! An excuse! You're too frightened to take _her_ offworld and you're thinking of anything you can to delay that. She's already on an alien planet and I think we've established the Furlings are not here."

Amy hears the shouting and comes around the corner, to see what's going on. Neither of them see her standing back, watching.

So Jack doesn't know she's there when he says, "She's not ready, you know damn well she isn't. And I'm not going to."

"So get her ready!"

They see Paul and Jonas coming towards them, carrying a dead animal that might be classified by someone with severe myopia as a pig. It was probably a pig in a former life. Both Jennifer and Jack ignore them. And neither of them have yet seen Amy, standing there, watching and listening.

"She's sixteen, Hailey! She's a kid. And there is no way on god's green Earth or any other planet that I'm taking her offworld until I'm absolutely sure she's ready for it."

"And when exactly is that going to be?"

"I don't know! She needs time."

Paul coughs to get their attention. "Is there a problem?"

Jack says no, Jennifer says yes. Both at the same time.

"All right, anyone care to fill me in?" Paul asks.

"We need to start going offworld, Paul, but somehow the colonel doesn't seem to get that."

"We've only been here a couple of weeks, Hailey. You have to give it time."

"We've been here for thirty-four Earth days. When exactly do you think we'll get around to doing what we came here to do, sir? Because as I've been trying to impress upon you, time is quickly becoming a factor."

Jennifer can feel the heat coming to her face, and if she could take a look outside herself she'd see the red rising up like water up a paper napkin in splotches. She knows it and shoves it aside because it truly doesn't matter.

She doesn't want this to be the wrong decision. She doesn't want to find out that she's just bought into another false hope of getting somewhere.

And she waits for Jack's next excuse, his retort. But his expression changes. He isn't arguing. He's deciding.

She's seen that look. It's the look he gives to Colonel Carter or Dr. Jackson when he's weighing their arguments. When their words start sinking into his brain and change the layout of his thoughts.

Maybe it's a miracle, maybe he just might give her the same regard.

It's like riding a giant wave, waiting for his answer. To see if she's passed this test. Feels exactly like waiting for exam scores or lab results.

He sighs and scratches across his ribs.

"You really think that we're pressed for time?" he asks her.

He really listened. He's really opening the door for her. Jennifer blinks. She's not exactly sure what to do with a fair chance.

"Yes, I do," she stammers, still a little off balance from the sheer fairness of it.

He listened. Jack is really going to try to see her point of view. It's a little bit exhilarating, feeling like she just might have influence. Power, even. Control. A say in things.

Jack crosses his arms. Scratches across his skinny teenage ribs and says, shirtless and scrawny and sounding exactly like his otherself, "All right. Then in that case, Jonas, I want you and Hailey to start getting a list of possible destinations. Paul, you and Amy take a case of weapons and don't come back until she can shoot straight."

"Really?" Jennifer asks, still in a vein of confusion at being so suddenly agreed with. "What will you be doing?"

"Finishing the roof," Jack says, putting his hands on his hips. He blinks. "And supervising. Because that's what I do. I supervise."

They all stand, blinking at their rather skinny but apparently still fearless leader. Jack looks back at them.

"What? Am I not speaking English? I'll use smaller words. _Go_, people," he says to them, pointing off in some general direction. They take another second then break away from him.

Hailey goes off towards the MALP and doesn't look back. The list is already building in her head. She's been doing the math the entire time and she's ready to work the problem.


	2. A Front from The North

**2. A Front From the North**

Paul loads weapons together into a large trunk while Amy watches. He names them for her as he grabs them.

"This is a P-90," he says, putting two of them into the trunk. "It's an automatic weapon. Carries a fifty round magazine. I'll explain what that means later."

Amy nods. Paul can't tell if she actually understands or if she just wants to please him. He sincerely hopes that she isn't just playing along. It's terrible, but he still doesn't know how to read her. Jack seems to do it pretty well. It's like he can see something in her movements and expressions that Paul can't pick up on.

He can tell her sad from her thoughtful. It all looks the same to Paul. It's not that Paul isn't good with people. He is. Paul reads voices, tones, things between the lines.

Amy's got enough difficult getting her basic ideas _on_ the lines, much less between them.

Jack comes into the cabin, sweaty but at least wearing a shirt this time.

"You two aren't gone yet?" asks Jack, sitting down on the bench by the door.

"Well, I thought we should start off by identifying everything before we got out there," Paul says. "Shouldn't you be doing this, though?"

Jack blinks. "I'm supervising."

"I know, but it's been a long time since I've had to train anyone, especially regarding firearms."

"Well, it'll be a good review for you then."

"And you're closer to her size, Colonel. No offense," Paul notes and looks very interested in the magazine clips he's putting next to the P-90's.

Jack coughs. "Not exactly."

"Of course, my mistake, sir," Paul answers with just the slightest hint of a grin. "I meant width wise."

"I know, I've just worked so hard to maintain my girlish figure," Jack answers. He doesn't smile before drinking, but Amy can't help but smile. "Do these fatigues make my butt look big?"

"I wasn't really looking," Paul answers. He turns to Amy. "This is a zat'nik'atel."

"You can just say zat if you want, saves time," Jack tells her. Paul looks up and looks at Jack and then Amy. He isn't sure if that was a joke or Jack being absently cruel.

Amy takes out her notebook. **Z-A-T-N-I-K-A-T-E-L. Right **

"Yeah, without the nikatel," Jack answers.

"Are you sure you don't want to do this, sir? I could finish the roof," Paul offers.

For a moment he stops and has to stop the mental vertigo going on in his head. He just called a fifteen-year-old sir without a moment's pause. And even as he thinks about it, it seems wrong not to call Jack 'sir'.

"Did everyone get up this morning before I did and make a pact to argue with me as much as possible?" he asks, getting off the bench. "Take some weapons, go out into the wilderness and don't come back until she knows how to kill people."

Paul smiles just a little. Of course it would be wrong not to call this _man_ sir. And he is a man. He's still Colonel O'Neill, the survivor and the consummate rebel, even when he's at the top of the food chain.

And if he's in a smaller body these days, well, Paul figures that in five years nobody will know the difference.

"I just don't think I'm the person to do it," Paul replies and notices Jack staring at him, his eyes getting squinty and the wheels in his mind turning.

"Is there a problem here, Major?"

"Well, yes. No offense, Amy, but I'm not sure I know how to communicate with you well enough yet."

Amy looks more impatient than anything. She scribbles something and thrusts it under Paul's nose.

He looks down and reads, **I can write in English, too. **

Paul nods his head. "What happens when there isn't any time for you to write it down or for one of us to read it?."

"That's the point," says Jack. He goes towards the door. "Figure something out. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go supervise."

Paul can pretty much tell that whatever arguement they were going to have is over. So he sighs, shuts the trunk and latches it. "Get the other end of this."

Amy squints at the trunk and slowly it starts to rise. Paul can barely feel the weight of it anymore, with her taking up the other end.

Jack sticks his head back through the door, "With your hands, Amy!"

Amy rolls her eyes and lets the trunk down gently. The feeling of weight and pressure return gradually. Amy picks up the handle on the other end and starts towards the door.

By the time they're half a mile out, Paul looks over at Amy. Her teeth are gritted tight and he can feel her arm shaking. Every once and a while she tries to carry it two handed, but ends up tripping over herself.

Paul's arm is pretty tired, too.

She should've dropped the damn thing by now. Paul has no idea what Jack was thinking. It was a stupid idea, telling her to try to carry this thing with him when it would probably give Teal'c a hernia. Even stupider that Jack's stripping Amy of her only true advantage.

Paul stops. He drops his end. Amy drops hers.

"Slight change of plans," says Paul, looking around. "This looks like a good place to start."

Amy nods and shakes her arm.

"Are you right handed or left handed?" Paul asks, opening the case.

Amy opens her notepad, writes: **Both. **

Paul smiles. Okay, this is something. Communication. Quirky facts about each other.

"How long have you been able to do that?"

**Since I got sick. **

"Oh." Paul says and frowns. He's beginning to wonder if there's anything about Amy that isn't directly related to the virus. It makes him irritated. If everything about Amy is just going to be one big tragedy. Because he doesn't feel like having to exude sympathy and respect all the time.

He doesn't want to treat her like a victim. Paul knows there's going to come a time when he's going to need to yell at her and use harsh words and curse and tell her to suck it up soldier, because we're saving the whole damn planet.

He stares down at the zat that he's about to set down on the ground with the other weapons. The idea is to put them in a line up and make Amy memorize them and all their details before she ever puts her hands on one.

But Paul looks at her, standing with her hands clasped together in front of her, watching him. She looks young and a little scared and completely out of place in fatigues. She looks small. Smaller than Jack, and she's actually taller than he is. She doesn't have his gusto to give her presence anything resembling the automatic command that Jack has. Or even Hailey. Hailey's about her size, but at least she has arrogance and more intelligence than one person has a right to.

If Paul saw her in a movie, he'd give her three scenes before the psycho killer finished her off. He wouldn't peg her as the one who survived.

She survived a virus, sure, but Paul can't be sure she had anything to do with it. Maybe she got lucky.

Paul is beginning to understand what Jack was thinking when he told Amy not to use her powers.

At some point, Amy has to be strong enough. They have to make her strong enough, because all the bridges that would've taken them back to Earth went down in flames a while back.

So he presses the zat to extend it and points it at her.

She trusts him enough so that she doesn't flinch, doesn't move.

"This is the first thing you need to know about weapons," Paul says.

He fires at her.

Amy flinches, throws her arms up to block the shot and falls backwards into a sitting position.

Paul's entire vision becomes dominated by electric blue.

Then the deep, deep black that comes with unconsciousness.


	3. Storm Warning

**3. Storm Warning**

Jonas can't keep his papers from blowing off in the wind. And going inside isn't an option either, because Colonel O'Neill is still banging away at the roof.

"What about this one? PX5-883?" asks Jonas, pointing to the middle of the second page of listed worlds.

"SG-10 had an observation post there," Jennifer answers, absently.

"That means we can't go?" he asks. "Are we completely avoiding any planet that the SGC has already been to?"

"If the SGC had found a planet with any trace of the Furlings, we would know about," Jennifer says.

"Actually, we did. About seven months after I joined SG-1."

"I know about the planet with Colonel Maybourne. That's my entire point. We can rule out every planet that the SGC has been to."

"That's half our list!"

"Which leaves us the other half. Which is twenty five hundred planets, if I'm counting correctly – which I am," Jennifer says, her voice ramping in irritation.

"I don't think completely dismissing another twenty five hundred planets is going to help us either."

"Fine. Once we get done with the twenty five hundred the SGC hasn't explored, we'll double back, but for now we need to make up for lost time."

"Lost time?" Jonas asks. "It's not a race, Captain Hailey. This is not the SGC. There's no dead line."

"That's exactly the problem. We need rules, standards."

Suddenly, Jonas stands up and starts looking past Jennifer entirely. "I don't think standards are what we need..."

Jennifer turns around to see the sky, suddenly turning black in a way that's far too fast for comfort.

"It's just a storm," she says.

"No, it's just started a few minutes ago. That's way too fast for a storm," Jonas disgrees.

"It's a storm on an alien planet!" Jennifer argues as the wind picks up. She starts jogging after Jonas as he goes towards the shed, but then sees the papers start to swirl around, going everywhere. She turns quickly on her heel and goes back for them.

Jonas and Jack are beginning to shout just to be heard over the wind and everywhere, yellow pieces of paper elude Jennifer's grasp. She holds them in a crumpled pile against her chest and reaches out with one hand.

"Jennifer, leave it!" Jonas screams, coming back towards her.

She looks up in time to see Jack straight off of the roof of the shed. It's only about a seven foot drop and he lands agile as a cat. They're both practically running. Jennifer sees the sky now almost completely dominated by black.

And the temperature is starting to drop so that Jennifer notices it. Like somebody opened a giant freezer door and the cold has finally reached them.

In the distance, something dark and angry rumbles to make itself known.

Jennifer drops all the papers and lets them fly off into the wind.

"They're not answering the radio, Colonel," Jonas tells him, handing him one of their four stolen radioes.

"Paul and Amy are still out there!" Jack screams. "Jonas, get whatever you can into the shed and nail i something /i to the rest of the roof. Hailey, you're with me. Jonas, keep trying them on the radio. Channel 2. If there's no contact in an hour, keep dialing Earth until they send a probe. Tell them what happened."

"If I do that, they'll never let us come back, Colonel. If I dial Earth, it's over."

"That's why I'm telling you to wait an hour," Jack shouts. "Contact every five minutes. Hailey, grab a zat. We're going."

Hailey goes into the shed and grabs not only two zats, but two ponchos.

She hands one to Jack. He throws it over him and starts walking at a fast pace in the direction they saw Paul and Amy leave in.

They walk for maybe a click and see the weapons trunk open and knocked over by the strong wind. Weapons are strewn all over the ground like fallen mechanical soldiers. It haunts her that there is nothing around to explain why this is. No tracks. No signs of battle.

Just abandoned weapons and the looming promise of a storm.

Jennifer watches as the first drops of rain fall on a P-90.

"There's no tracks!" Jennifer shouts. "They could be anywhere. It doesn't make sense. If something happened, Davis would head back to base camp."

"Unless he didn't get the chance. He might have headed for the trees," Jack theorizes. He stares at the line of trees half a click away.

"We only have a half hour of light left! There's no time!" Jennifer scream over the howling wind that's whipped her hair completely out of it's ponytail. The rain that was a drizzle a few moments ago has now turned into stinging needles.

"If go at a dead run -"

"We'll still never make it. Sir! If we don't make it back to base camp we're as good as dead and in about twenty minutes, it's going to get very, very dark."

Jack looks desperately towards the treeline.

"If we run -"

"We'll never make it. We're pressing our luck as it is! If they are in the trees, they're safer than we are right now!"

Jennifer grabs Jack's arm and pulls him.

They take off at a dead run, with the storm darkening and intensifying at their backs.

They reach camp to find planks of wood meant for construction of bunk beds nailed sloppily to the roof and the MALP anchored to the DHD. There are papers plastered against the Stargate itself.

However, it does look like Jonas managed to get all the other equipment and supplies inside the shed.

Jonas sees them coming back.

"You didn't find them?" he asks, and Jennifer wonders why he felt the need to.

"We ran out of time," Jack tells him, in place of an actual explanation. They race into the shed and shut the door. Jonas grabs a board and a nail and Jack grabs him by the wrist. "What if they come back?"

"Then we'll unboard it," Jennifer says. "Whatever is coming is nasty, sir. We can't leave the door unboarded."

Jennifer picks up a rock and a few nails and joins Jonas at the door. They hammer four boards in. Jack stands there and watches them do it.

They sit huddled together in the only free space left in the shed, now cramped with supplies. Jack looks behind him and opens the trunk he's leaning against. He gets some blankets and passes them to Jennifer and Jonas.

Jennifer says, "At the rate the temperature is dropping, we'll need more than blankets."

"We've got parkas somewhere around here. Didn't think we need them here," Jonas tells her.

"We'll look for them when the time comes," Jack orders, grimly. "Just keep listening. They could still make it back. And keep trying the radio."

Jennifer nods. She fishes out the radio from beside her and presses it. "Paul?" There is static and the sound of the wind outside. "Paul? Do you read. Please repond."

And still, nothing. Jennifer hands the radio to Jack. She's not prepared to pretend she believes that they're ever going hear from Paul or Amy again. She scrunches in on herself and pulls the blanket tight around her.

Jack tries the radio a few more times before giving up. He puts the radio on top of the trunk.

"Colonel," Jonas says, softly, but no so soft they can't hear him over the noise outside. "I've been thinking."

"This oughta be good," Jack sighs. "Sorry."

"This storm came up very, very quickly."

"Your point?"

"I don't think is just a fluke of nature." Jonas's voice is grim and thick with scientifically calculated warning. "I think there might be something or someone deliberately causing this."

"Is that even possible?" Jennifer asks.

"Touchstone could do it," Jack tells her. "Well, taking away a touchstone could do it."

"You think there's a touchstone on this planet?" asks Jonas.

"What's a touchstone?" Jennifer interrupts them, before they go too far without her.

"This device on Madrona. It made the weather stable. Some NID guys got a wild hair and stole it and their weather started doing something like this."

"But we're the only people on this planet," Jennifer says, in a way that's more of a question than a statement.

"Could this be something we did?" Jonas ponders.

"I'd know a touchstone if I saw it. Believe me," Jack assures them. "It's a wide wonderful galaxy, who knows how many people have little weather machine thingies."

For a long time, there's only the moaning of the wind and the steady growl of thunder that encroaches ever faster. Jennifer watches Jack's eyes as he studies the sounds outside, hoping to hear a whistle or a call over all the chaos. There is only the storm, and still Jack listens.

"You think they'll get through this," Jennifer says. "You really think that either one of them is strong enough?"

"I'm thinking that_ we_ might not be strong enough to get through this."

"Whatever _this_is," Jonas adds. Jennifer thinks about asking him why he felt the need to remind them that they have no idea what's going on.

"Just keep trying the radio," Jack orders him, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "They're out there."

Jennifer keeps herself from saying 'and that's our problem in a nutshell', because she realizes that she's got nothing more than that to add. There's no math for her to do, and she feels lost - for the first time since she left Earth.


End file.
